Love and Hot Chicken - Mary Liza Hartong (Book).

Book 37/52.

Love and Hot Chicken - Mary Liza Hartong.

My Rating: 2/5.

I got this book from a friend who was returning to India from the USA for vacation, and we were supposed to catch up in Bangalore. Usually these days I ask my foreign friends to get me books from their respective countries, Authors of their choice and this was one of the cases where my friend's choice didn't work one bit for me. Although I love the way she has written on the first page of the book “From JFK to Pune” :) with a date stamp. I guess she picked it up, going by the title, as this turns out to be a Lesbian love story, the protagonist is going through a recent loss of her father, moves back to her hometown town and for no reason sticks back, leaving her PhD halfway. On top of that, she starts working in a local eatery, a chicken shack, as going by the title, and that's where she meets her partner. Coincidentally, her best friend is a gay guy, who is almost like a brother she never had. The Chicken Shack owner suddenly decides to have an Employee Beauty Pageant, and the final prize is supposed to be $1ML can you believe that? Unfortunately, the characters are so underdeveloped that I could feel nothing for no one in particular, and there is no solid reason for anyone to do what they were doing in their sleepy old town. Neither is there much talk of mouthwatering food nor any heart-touching story to tell of the people around. I was surprised to read that the lead was doing her PhD when the tragedy struck, but the way her story goes forward and backwards, I guess she never grows beyond a teenager and shockingly, her mother too finds a partner at the blink of an eye. On top of that, the ending was so predictable that I could guess it by the time the book reached the halfway mark. I was almost on the verge of DNFing this one as the first of the year so far, but since this was a gift, I kept going and finished it. I was looking forward to picking up a same sex story for quite a while, but this one turns out to be a turn-off on that aspect too. 

 If you haven’t come across this one, I suggest you stay away if it comes your way, but if you have read and loved it, forgive me, please.